For the second season of this star-studded HBO drama, the headline news is the arrival of Meryl Streep to join Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon et al. Just as significant, though, could be the arrival of director Andrea Arnold. Her films Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights and American Honey all made distinctive use not only of character but also of geography – which suggests the series’ other key cast member, the Californian coast, is likely to retain its leading role.

The book on which Big Little Lies is based was set in a fictional Australian town, but the show was shifted to Monterey by showrunner David E Kelley. Previously best known as the setting for John Steinbeck’s epic novels, the area has a combination of laid-back small town charm and spectacular Pacific seascapes that makes a big impression. Kelley calls it ‘a hypnotic beauty’, saying, ‘We were looking to draw the audience in and have them say, “I want to go there on vacation.”’ In which case, job done.

In fact, many interior locations (and a few exteriors, including the all-important school and yoga centre) are in Los Angeles, but viewers will be pleased to know the production has returned to Monterey and Carmel for Season 2. Lovers Point is, strictly speaking, in Pacific Grove, next door to Monterey proper, but that’s splitting hairs. Both the four-acre park and the beach here have been well used by BLL, the first as the venue for dramatic Season 1 moments including the showdown between Jane (Shailene Woodley) and Celeste (Nicole Kidman) over the true identity of the school bully.

For Season 2, Lovers Point takes on an even more central role, with the introduction of the Monterey Five’s new meeting place, the Blissful Drip Café – the production built an entire café on the headland, giving it a distinctive alfresco wicker decor. In the first season of the show, the Blue Blues café/bar where the ladies met was among the unmistakable pastel shops and restaurants of Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey itself, inspired by a restaurant called Paluca Trattoria and brought to life using a bit of digital trickery.

One of the big draws of Season 1 was the characters’ homes, all with their built-in indicators of character and hierarchy, and there are a few intriguing changes here. Celeste’s house, with its glass walls and Lana Del Rey summer-sadness vibe, is a private home in the millionaire’s playground of Carmel Highlands (though the master suite is a studio build). For Season 2, location manager Greg Alpert told Architectural Digest there was more use of the outdoor elements of the building, adding, ‘I know it was important for Andrea Arnold to sort of get the women in nature more.’

At the even grander hilltop castle inhabited by Renata (Laura Dern), actually some way away in Malibu, there’s been a refurb for Season 2: production designer John Paino told Architectural Digest that this is ‘related to a bit of a plot point’, pointing out ‘a big sort of brutalist coffee table’ specially built for the set. There’s not much change at the sand-dune villa belonging to Madeline (Reese Witherspoon), which is in reality close to Renata’s on Malibu’s Broad Beach Road (and, according to Vulture, the most expensive of them all in real life), but there are big changes for two more characters.

Jane, formerly in a bungalow filmed in Pasadena, has moved to a new condo, which was shot on location in Sea Ranch, Sonoma County, north of San Francisco. This settlement is a renowned architectural landmark which Paino described to The Hollywood Reporter as ‘a sprawling complex of beautiful old condos built in the Seventies with exposed wood’. He and his team decorated Jane’s interiors, he said, as ‘equal parts boho, Pier 1 and thrift shop’. She’ll also have a neighbour in the shape of Meryl Streep’s Mary Louise, whose scheme Paino calls ‘provincial Connecticut Protestant new classic with a conservative bent’.

We’ll also be seeing more of the home of Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz). Hers is a different mode of living again, in a wooden structure up in the hills in an oak wood, filmed near Topanga, north-west of Los Angeles. ‘She’s a yoga instructor and into health, and her husband is a landscape architect, so their house is very reminiscent of what they both do for a living,’ Alpert told Architectural Digest.

Another new arrival for Season 2 is Carmel River State Beach, a rugged headland at the estuary of Carmel River that’s perfect for the show’s trademark windswept contemplation of the waves. When it comes to beaches in BLL, as a rule if a character’s jogging (especially Jane) it’s probably on Del Monte Beach, a long flat shoreline that curves round the bottom end of Monterey Bay. If it’s waves crashing metaphorically on sharp rocks, it’s likely to be the rugged coastline of Garrapata State Park, round the peninsula to the south, beyond Carmel – this was the beach in the closing shots of Season 1. Another notable venue, also used for scenes of Jane running, is the nearby Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, where the wild cliffs give way to hidden bays reminiscent of the Greek Islands.

There are plenty more familiar sights, too, including one of the show’s landmarks, the Bixby Creek Bridge on the Big Sur coast. A monumental feat of engineering that spans a seaside inlet, it reappears in the opening credits for Season 2 with all six leads driving across it, having played a role in many of their journeys home in Season 1 despite its position some way away from their, or indeed any, homes.

One of the few indoor locations used is the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which made a big impression in the original trailer and reappeared throughout Season 1. Famed for its jellyfish, and at one point for exhibiting great white sharks, it’s sited close to Lovers Point, the two connected by another much-used location, Ocean View Boulevard. This long seaside vista is perfect for Big Little Lies, providing a superb natural backdrop of sea and sky for the equally intense personal interaction we can expect to see plenty more of over the coming weeks.